My lady love a warrior be

By THLaird Colyne Stewart, AS 50 (2016)

For Þorfinna.

My lady love a warrior be

With mighty arm of tempered steel;

No dainty rose that withers she—

She is Athena and I kneel

To gaze in wonder at her face,

Held close in awe by beau’tous grace.

Like iron are her hard-set legs

Where she blocks the bridge’s span,

Before her beaten foeman begs

While cheers are bellowed from her clan;

Beside her I am lost in space

Held close in awe by beau’tous grace.

Her fingers deft as dancing light

They throw a blade ‘cross open field,

Strong hit within the red so bright

And I, I find that I must yield,

For I am in the greatest place,

Held close in awe by beau’tous grace.

Written as a blazon. The blazon is an ordered poem of praise, or blame, usually directed towards a woman and praised her physical features using metaphors. The genre takes its name from the heraldic term “blazon” which forms the root of the word “emblazon” which means to celebrate or adorn (with heraldic markings). Though the term is from 16^th century France, similar poems were being written by at least the 13^th century.

I’ve written “My lady love a warrior be” in the same format as the famous blason “There Is a Garden in Her Face” by Thomas Campion (1567-1620). Like Campion I wrote three stanzas with a rhyme scheme of ababcC (where the C is the same line in each stanza). While blasons usually use metaphors to describe features such as hair, eyes, lips, teeth and breasts, I chose to praise my lady’s strength and compare her limbs to metals. The second stanza refers to an incident at a Pikeman’s Pleasure where, during a bridge battle, she single-handed pushed back a charge.

For Percival de la Rocque upon His Elevation to the Order of the Pelican

By THLaird Colyne Stwart, July AS 50 (2015)

Exordium:

I must now praise a man of worth

Quite tall of form with argent hair

Well known for love of drink and mirth

An archer with a herald’s flare

Who well can fire bow in clout

And once stood as a bear-lord stout.

With fingers nimble on the bow

And keen mind bent on ancient lore

Face bordered by white hair like snow

Eyes purpled by the hint of war

The bee-loved man stands proper, proud,

Is brought before a Royal crowd

And all achievements he has earned

Are loud proclaimed for all to hear

As from him heralds all have learned

And archers could cock bow to ear

For of his time he freely gives

And through him Ealdormere bright lives

Glad from his arms he gives his strength

His mettle shown with all he does

For service he will go to length

And ever this is how it was

This man of worth, this man so true,

Who shows great merit through and through.

Envoi:

And so the Royals name him Peer,

A Pelican of Ealdormere.

A blason written as a grand chant. A blason was a 16^th century French ordered poem of praise, or blame, usually directed towards a woman which praised her physical features using metaphors. I decided to write a blazon as it takes its name from the heraldic term “blazon” which forms the root of the word “emblazon” which means to celebrate or adorn (with heraldic markings). This seemed appropriate given Percival’s love of heraldry. I also tried to use a few heraldic terms sprinkled throughout the verse.

The gran(d) chan(t), also known as the courtois, was an Old French genre of lyric poetry devised by the trouvères in the 12^th to 13^th centuries. It was adapted from the Occitan canso of the troubadours. Like the canso it explored courtly love, but it could also be used to expound on many other topics or themes.

Typically, a canso had three parts: the exordium (the first stanza where the composer explained his purpose), the main body of the text and then one to three envois (which were not always present). Except for the envois, the stanzas all had the same sequence of verses (each verse had the same number of metrical syllables). The envois took the form of a shortened stanza, containing only a last part of the standard stanza used up to that point.

Each stanza had the same internal rhyme scheme (so if the first line rhymed with the third line in the first stanza, it will do so in each successive one).